A recipe for cinema success
Pixar's new movie Ratatouille is a mouthwatering masterpiece as good as anything they've done before, says our Movie Blogger Carl Jones.
You'd have got some pretty long odds on a greasy rat from the French sewers becoming the must-have cuddly toy this Christmas, says our Movie Blogger Carl Jones.
But thanks to the geniuses at animated film studio Pixar, that's precisely what has happened.
Ratatouille, their latest big screen offering, is a mouthwatering masterpiece as good as anything that's gone before - and that's no mean feat given that their CV includes the likes of The Incredibles, Toy Story,
Monsters Inc and Finding Nemo.
The star of the show is rebellious rat Remy, who is not like the rest of his family. While they're happy to scavenge for food through the local dustbins, he dreams of experiencing proper food and becoming a chef.
Tragedy turns to triumph one day when he is accidentally flushed down a sewer, only to be washed up on the doorstep of the Paris restaurant created by his idol Auguste Gusteau.
Creeping into the kitchens, he stumbles upon hapless kitchen worker Linguini, who is trying to make a soup but has no clue how to do it. So Remy secretly adds a few ingredients to help turn it into a winner, and
when the head chef demands a repeat performance the following night, Linguini secretly joins forces with Remy to create more culinary delights.
Can Remy and Linguini achieve the seemingly impossible: earn a glowing review from notoriously sardonic food critic Anton Ego (voiced by Peter O'Toole) and win the admiration of beautiful colleague Colette?
It's a treat finding out in this stunning family-friendly feast.
Huge technological advances continue to blur the boundaries between the live action and digital worlds. Indeed, there are times when you forget you're actually watching a cartoon.
But it's not just at the computer suite that Pixar excels. Equal attention to detail can be found in the screenplay, creating loveable characters who leap off the screen and into our hearts, achieving the almost unthinkable . . . making rats the new must-have cuddly children's accessory in the run-up to Christmas.
And that's why this movie stands aside from the increasingly congested animated movie crowd.
Ratatouille deserves three Michelin stars for its well-crafted script,garnished with laugh-out loud comic interludes. Vocal performances are strong, from O'Toole's oily reviewer with a penchant for caustic critique, to Patton Oswalt's loveable fur-ball who dares to live his dreams.
At the other end of the spectrum comes The Invasion, a modern-day remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers which sees a mysterious space shuttle crash to earth, spilling out a deadly extraterrestrial virus.
As the epidemic spreads across the streets of Washington DC, normal folk are morphed into emotionless clones.
It turns out that the only way to prevent being taken in by the plague is to stay awake . . . doze off, and you're toast.
It's always a bad sign, I find, when the distributors decide to deny the press a chance to see the film ahead of its general release. I saw it on a DVD imported from America, where it's been on general showing
for a while.
The UK critics haven't missed much. Clearly butchered by reshoots and re-edits, it switches from being snoozily slow to inexplicably frantic in the blink of an eye. Usually for no reason whatsoever.
Brilliant psychiatrist Carol (Nicole Kidman) and her colleague Ben Driscoll (Daniel Craig) must fight off the unfeeling doppelgangers, and evade capture before finding a cure.
Kidman seems to spend most of her time running frantically in no direction in particular, while Craig looks totally bored with his underdeveloped character. To be fair, he probably had more on his mind ? it was during the filming of this damp squib that he was told he'd landed the 007 role.
There are a couple of effective moments blended amid the mayhem, but for the most part this is pedestrian, predictable and frankly, an unsatisfactory mess.
How ironic that a movie about people who must stay awake at any cost is a cure for cinematic insomnia . . .